Things to do in London this weekend (30-31 August)

If you’re a carnivore with a big appetite for BBQ, Meatopia has your name written all over it. The boozy food fest is a veritable utopia for meat lovers, with 50 chefs invited down over four days to cook up a storm. This year's highlights include Andrew Clarke of renowned live fire restaurant Acme Fire Cult, rave-reviewed Manchester spot Stow's chef Jamie Pickles, and Michelin-starred dining concept HUMO. Book your tickets here, but be warned – they don’t include food, and the queues here can be lengthy, so it’s best to arrive early with your ‘meatbuck’ tokens at the ready.

There are few more striking spots to catch a movie than the iconic surrounds of the Barbican Sculpture Court. As usual, the City of London’s temple of the arts has an inventively curated line-up in store for the final week of August. Cineastes can revel in the cult sci-fi extravaganza that is David Lynch’s 1984 ‘Dune’, while music lovers have an outdoor screening of Björk’s mesmerising new concert movie ‘Cornucopia’. Standard tickets are £18 (£12 for under-25s and £10 for under-18s) and there’s street food to feast on while you sit back, relax and enjoy the show. 

Applebee’s has been doing its quietly impressive thing since 2000. Starting life as a fishmonger, it casually morphed into a cutesy family-run seafood restaurant. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Applebee’s had a bit of an interior spruce up in 2025, and is now a light, bright space in which to plough through a superlative seafood offering from executive chef, Frankie van Loo. Super-sustainable, the menu at this Borough Market mainstay charges regularly, depending on what the Devon and Cornwall dayboats have brought to Brixham Fish Market. Our oysters were hearty and fresh, a starter of wild seabass ceviche came meaty-thick, brown crab rarebit was delightfully chunky and we clock a massive fish and chips complete with a tower of tartate. 

Got the Notting Hill Carnival blues? Head to Camberwell, where the carni vibes are being kept alive for one more day. Back for a second year, Camberwell Carnival is an energetic ode to the Southwark community. Expect live music sessions, dance workshops, cultural parades, steel pans, global street food, panel discussions and free rum punch, all brought to you by the local people of Camberwell. Plus, it’s the borough’s first fully eco-powered festival. 

Immersive entertainment franchise Secret Cinema has taken things back to basics, putting the classic 1978 film musical at the heart of this evening. In Secret Cinema’s Grease: The Immersive Movie Musical, the original film is shown on large screens dotted around the cavernous new Battersea Park venue Evolution, which has been lavishly tricked out to serve as Rydale High. Then there are live actors who pop up to take over singing and talking duties in key scenes. The live band is a nice touch. It’s a good natured and lively, geed along by well-drilled actors, with a funfair to boot!

Too many book festivals don’t have enough festival. It isn’t that there’s too much emphasis on books (how could there be?) but that there just aren't sufficient opportunities to have fun with your fellow bookworms. But not Queen’s Park Book Fest, which is less a meeting of the literary elite, more village fete. Held, as always, in the public park, it’ll combine literary celebs with stand-up comedy, local history and lectures on pressing issues of the day. And crucially, each day is capped off by a party into the night. Not like a rave but, you know, just a jolly good time. This year, highlights include BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty talking about her new book on women's health, Alan Hollingshurst discussing his latest portrait of modern England, and a rare public appearance from novelist Hanif Kureishi after he became paralysed. Plus, to sweeten the deal there are foodie events including a panel discussion from chefs Thomasina Miers, Ben Lippett, and Yotam Ottolenghi. Delicious!

It’s been 30 years since Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes traded social realist documentary filmmaking for narrative fiction. Active since the 1970s, the Belgian brothers have built up an impressive body of work, largely from intensely naturalistic stories of the poor and dispossessed. Their closest British analogue would be Ken Loach. Now, the two-time Palme d’Or winners bring their tried-and-true methodology to a diverse quintet of teenagers temporarily housed in a residential shelter for young mothers in the directors’ native city of Liège. The Dardennes paint with a bleak brush, yet invariably succeed in finding light in the darkness, their empathy for those from the lowest rungs of society ultimately shining through. It’s a testament to their compassionate lens that we cannot help but root for every one of their characters, even when they inevitably fuck up.

In UK cinemas Friday, Aug 29

Want a drink? You've come to the right place. This is Time Out’s list of best bars in London, our curated guide to London’s drinking scene, featuring the buzziest bars in the capital right now. These are the 50 places we’d recommend to a friend, because we love drinking in them and have done many, many times over. From classy cocktail counters to delightful dives, London’s got them all.

Some murder-mysteries – Seven, for instance – immerse you in grisly menace. Others – Memories of Murder –  weave a web of intricate plotting and surprising feints. The Thursday Murder Club, which follows a set of crime-solving pensioners from Richard Osman’s best-selling murder-mystery novels, just wants to plump up a cushion and spin you a cosy yarn with an unusually high body count. For a movie in which people die violently every 30 or so minutes, the stakes are stupendously low, the vibe steadfastly upbeat. Harry Potter veteran Christopher Columbus presides over the mild-mannered sleuthing with an Anglophile affection. Grab your nan, put the kettle on and enjoy some exceedingly fine thesps hamming it up royally. 

Summoning all Dungeons and Dragons fans. Are you ready for four whole days of quests, NPCs and big bad evil guys? Head down to Between the Bridges in the last week of August for the World’s Lair Fantasy Festival. Each day of the festival is split into two parts: ‘Dusk’ and ‘Dawn’. The former lets guests take part in fantasy-inspired workshops like candle painting and calligraphy, watch live DnD actual play and test their knowledge in a fantasy-focused pub quiz. After 6.30pm, the fest turns into an adults-only event, with performances from horror-fantasy podcast Dark Dice and DnD adventuring party Oxventure. Watch out – you may even run into a dragon or two.

British greats Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch revision the 1989, Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas adaptation of the novel The War of The Roses, about a once-happy couple fighting over their dream home during a divorce. Directed by Jay Roach (Bombshell) with a screenplay by Tony McNamara (The Favourite), the movie does have laugh-out-loud moments, some coming from the couple's love-hate banter, others from their US friends, played by Kate McKinnon and Andy Samberg. And yet, despite the comedic might on screen, many of the gags fail to land. The Roses gets off to an enjoyable start, but like the marriage at its centre, the novelty wears off.

In cinemas worldwide Fri Aug 29.

Do you remember when the first Gorillaz album came out? It felt like we were catapulted into a new era of music and visuals. Created by musician Damon Albarn and artist Jamie Hewlett, Gorillaz is the artificial foursome of bassist Murdoc Niccals, singer 2D, drummer Russel Hobbs and guitarist Noodle, and House of Kong is their fabled homeland. This exhibition, of the same name, lifts a veil on how the group first came together to blow up a pre-digital world with the release of ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ all the way back in 2000. It documents their past misadventures, musical innovation and ground-breaking virtual performances via an all-new immersive experience.

It’s not been staged in this country for over 30 years, but Lerner & Loewe’s Brigadoon, the story of the two Americans who happen to stumble across a Scottish town that only appears once a century, is here and top Scots playwright Rona Munro has partly rewritten the book, doing stuff like setting the story during WW2 and having the time-displaced villagers speak Scots Gaelic to each other. Munro is a bloody good playwright and gives the absurdly flyweight musical a bit of genuine heft. There’s a sumptuous score, too, and ultimately it’s just very fun that this level of time and care has been pumped into resuscitating what is essentially a curio. 

It’s one of those Fringe successes people dream of mimicking. Since debuting in Edinburgh in 2014, Duncan Macmillan Every Brilliant Thing – co-written with its original star Jonny Donahoe – has earned rave reviews and performed all across the globe. Now it’s on the West End. Over the course of its three-month stint, Donahoe, Ambika Mod, Sue Perkins and Minnie Driver will all take the lead role, but we see Lenny Henry. Dressed in a colourful patterned shirt, he sends smiles soaring across the crowd from the outset. The conversation about mental health has moved on since 2014. Nevertheless, the play’s message still lands today. For all its sorrow, the play gleams with hope. It is a truly brilliant thing.

‘The sleep of reason produces monsters’. The Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani’s new commission for Somerset House takes the sleep of reason as its starting point. In the grand Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court, she has installed a ten-metre-tall blue figure, who lays supine, gently breathing with closed eyes. We’re told that this ethereal, childlike giant has slept through ‘warnings of present and imminent catastrophes, political and social disaster and environmental collapse.’ Art with a message often risks being didactic, prioritising its statement over its aesthetic experience. Here, though, is a deft balance of content and form: a nuanced message, contained within immediately impressive and accessible art.

Jean-Francois Millet was an artist of the people. Born to a farming family, he spent his life painting rural workers and the conditions of their labour. This exhibition, marking the 150th anniversary of his death, presents an impressive array of his work, which went on to inspire Vincent van Gogh among other artists. Heads down and backs bent, there is a melancholic, weathered beauty to Millet’s characters.

Got the Notting Hill Carnival blues? Head to Camberwell, where the carni vibes are being kept alive for one more day. Back for a second year, Camberwell Carnival is an energetic ode to the Southwark community. Expect live music sessions, dance workshops, cultural parades, steel pans, global street food, panel discussions and free rum punch, all brought to you by the local people of Camberwell. Plus, it’s the borough’s first fully eco-powered festival. 

In the Hayward Gallery’s HENI Project Space, two Iranian-Canadian artists are having fun with language. Sculpture, video and found objects all find their place in this playful exhibition that juxtaposes words and images to show us the precarity of truth and meaning in today’s world. From a hyper-realistic sculpture to a repurposed electric motorway sign, Ghazaleh Avarzamani and Ali Ahadi find many ways to combine the quotidian with the uncanny.

This new play by American writer Doug Wright comes to the Barbican from Broadway heralded by a 2023 Tony Award for star Sean Hayes (Will & Grace) and is about someone you’ve likely never heard of. Oscar Levant was a pianist – best known for playing George Gershwin’s music – and a humourist, who popped up in a handful of films including An American in Paris. This play re-imagines the events surrounding his chaotic appearance as a guest on The Tonight Show in 1958. It's fragmentary and frantic – culminating in a truly virtuosic piano performance by a spotlit Hayes, who looks agonisingly at his own hands as if they belong to a stranger. It’s hauntingly powerful and the apex of this funny and devastating play.  

Love sushi, dumplings or noodles? Inamo’s got you covered. This high-tech spot in Soho or Covent Garden lets you order from interactive tabletops, play over 20 games while you wait and even doodle on your table. Then it’s all you can eat pan-Asian dishes like Sichuan chicken, red dragon rolls and Korean wings with bottomless drinks. Usually £113.35, now just £33 or £26 if you're in early at the weekend!

Get Inamo’s best ever bottomless food & drink brunch from only £26 with Time Out Offers.

Part of an ongoing exhibition series of group exhibitions featuring artists not represented by the gallery, this show will see three painters – Koak, Ding Shilun and Cece Philips – fill Hauser & Wirth’s vast Savile Row space with windows into imagined interiors. All taking domestic architectures as their starting point, each artist’s work becomes a meditation on the psychology of space.

Hollywood stars don’t come as classy as Sophia Loren. This programme of films curates by the BFI, Cinecittà and Cinema Department of the Ministry of Culture of Italy, celebrates oven 70 years of the glamazon actress with screenings of 4K restorations and cinematic classics. Loook out for talks including Sophia Loren: Hollywood Italian Style as well as screening including: Good Folk’s Sunday (Anton Giulio Majano, 1953), Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960), Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966), Saturday, Sunday and Monday (Lina Wertmüller, 1990) and The Life Ahead (Edoardo Ponti, 2020).

You’ve probably heard of ‘Instagram face’. This summer, Somerset House is dedicating a whole exhibition to things like the internet’s inclination for everyone to look exactly the same. In Virtural Beauty, Somerset House will explore the impact of digital technologies on how we define beauty today. The show will display more than 20 artworks from the 'Post-Internet' era, an art movement concerned with the influence of the internet on art and culture. It will feature sculpture, photography, installation, video and performance art, with highlights including ORLAN’s Omniprésence (1993), a groundbreaking performance in which the artist live-streamed her own facial aesthetic surgery, and AI-generated portraits by Minnie Atairu, Ben Cullen Williams, and Isamaya Ffrench. 

★★★★ 'Frameless has managed to create something genuinely exciting' – Time Out

Escape reality through maximum immersion and experience 42 masterpieces from 29 of the world’s most iconic artists, each reimagined beyond belief, through cutting-edge technology. Situated in Marble Arch, Frameless plays host to four unique galleries with hypnotic visuals and a dazzling score. Enjoy 90 minutes of surreal artwork from Bosch, Dalí and more for just £24!

Get £24.80 tickets (originally £31), only through Time Out Offers.

Emily Kam Kngwarray, an Anmatyerr artist from the Sandover region in the Northern Territory of Australia, didn’t start making art until she was 70. Her prolific and vibrant output during the ensuing decade paved the way for Aboriginal artists, women artists and Australian artists – and is the subject of this, her first major solo exhibition in Europe. Expect monumental canvases adorned with batik and acrylic patterns whose networks of dots and lines are almost immersive.

Another year, another spectacular line-up of classical music. In 2025, the orchestral extravaganza will feature 86 concerts across eight weeks, with over 3,000 artists taking to the stage, with the majority of the action taking place inside the grand surroundings of London’s Royal Albert Hall. This weekend, look out for a BBC Young Composer Workshops, which give those aged 15 to 18 the chance to meet leading composers; a rendition of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony from Nicholas Collon and the Aurora Orchestra; and a concert from French period-instrument outfit Le Concert Spiritue. 

Imagine indulging in all the dumplings, rolls, and buns you can handle, crafted by a Chinatown favourite with over a decade of culinary excellence. Savour Taiwanese pork buns, savoury pork and prawn soup dumplings, and luxurious crab meat xiao long bao. To top it off, enjoy a chilled glass of prosecco to elevate your feast. Cheers to a truly delightful dining experience at Leong’s Legend!

In Mansfield, the wedding of the year is about to take place. Local girl Sylvia (Sinéad Matthews) is marrying Polish lad Marek (Julian Kostov). The ceremony plays out in real time at Beth Steel’s Till The Stars Come Down, now running in the West End after debuting at the National Theatre. Director Bijan Sheibani sucks you right into this world through fast-paced dialogue and artfully constructed tableaus. It is heady, hilarious and emotional; the wedding itself might be a car crash, but this imaginative production is anything but. 

The Arcola Theatre's alt-opera festival Grimeborn returns for its eighteenth year in 2025 and it’s as eclectic as ever, from a stripped back reworking of Wagner’s magnum opus Tristan und Isolde (Aug 13-16) to the first ever full staging of John Joubert’s final opera Jane Eyre (Aug 6-9)  and the return of last year’s bit of fun Sense & Senibility, The Musical (Aug 19-23) which is, you know, a bit more musical-y, and also last year’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which is, you know, bleak.